Rep. Dreier Credits New GOP Majority With Past Economic Growth

January 18, 2011 2:07 pm ET —
Kate Conway

Over the last
two years, the GOP has been happy to blame President
Obama
for deficits primarily incurred as a result of Bush-era Republican policies, so
it really should be no surprise that, mere days into the 112th
Congress, they're more than willing to take credit for the accomplishments of
the Obama administration.

Appearing on Fox
News' Happening Now, House Rules
Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA) credited "positive numbers" on the
economy to House Republicans' newly held majority status and their pursuit of
"pro-growth policies."

REP. DREIER: The
notion that many pundits and people on some of those other cable channels throw
out regularly that we want to bring an end to health care for people is just
preposterous. We are determined to ensure that with a market-oriented approach
we can have the kind of chance for people to have access to insurance and we can get our economy growing. And we've gotten some positive numbers. I
think it's in large part because we won our majority and we're pursuing
pro-growth policies. I think we can make it happen.

Watch:

Dreier didn't
specify which "positive numbers" he's been looking at, but perhaps it was the
January 7th release of BLS's December 2010 unemployment rate, which at
9.4% was the lowest it's been
since May 2009.
Or maybe he's referring to the addition of over 100,000 private sector jobs in December alone.

It's hard to understand
how Dreier can justify giving the not-yet-implemented policies of the House Republican
majority credit for economic growth that occurred when both houses of
Congress were dominated by Democrats, but apparently this is a strategy
Republicans have decided to embrace. ThinkProgress caught Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) pulling a similar maneuver. Calling the Obama administration "highly anti-business," Kyl credited the
December extension of the Bush tax cuts for private-sector business growth that
had occurred in the 11 months prior
to the passage of the extension.